Toujours Provence (15 page)

“How was the Ricard?” asked Michel. I said that the Ricard was fine, but perhaps I had absorbed enough education for one night.

For days afterward, I kept scribbling down questions that I wanted to ask Michel. I found it curious, for instance, that the word was so well known and had such strong associations, and yet its origins seemed as cloudy as the drink itself. Who had invented
pastis
before Pernod had taken it over? Why was it so firmly rooted in Provence, rather than Burgundy or the Loire? I went back to the professor.

Whenever I have asked a Provençal about Provence—whether about climate, food, history, the habits of animals, or the oddities of humans—I have never been short of answers.
The Provençal loves to instruct, usually with a great deal of personal embroidery, and preferably around a table. And so it was this time. Michel arranged a lunch, on the one day of the week when his restaurant is normally closed, with a few friends he described as
“hommes responsables”
who would be happy to lead me down the path of knowledge.

Eighteen of us gathered under the big white canvas umbrella in Michel’s courtyard, and I was introduced to a blur of faces and names and descriptions: a government official from Avignon, a wine grower from Carpentras, two executives from Ricard, some stalwarts from Cabrières. There was even a man wearing a tie, but he slipped it off after five minutes and hung it in a noose over the drinks trolley. That was the beginning and the end of any formality.

Most of the men shared Michel’s passion for
boules
, and the wine grower from Carpentras had brought with him a few cases of his special
cuvée
, with labels showing a game in progress. While the
rosé
was being chilled and the red uncorked, there was a generous dispensation of the sporting drink and the
boules
player’s standby,
le vrai pastis de Marseille, le pastis Ricard
.

Born in 1909 and, according to one of his executives, still looking for trouble, Paul Ricard’s success is a classic case of energetic and intelligent exploitation. His father was a wine merchant, and young Paul’s work took him into the bars and
bistrots
of Marseille. In those days the laws of concoction were not stringent, and many bars made their own
pastis
. Ricard decided to make his, but he added an ingredient that the others lacked, which was a genius for promotion.
Le vrai pastis de Marseille
may not have been very different from the others, but it was good, and made better by Ricard’s talent
for marketing. It was not long before his
pastis
was the most popular
pastis
, at least in Marseille.

Ricard was ready to expand, and he made a decision that probably accelerated his success by several years. The area around Marseille was a competitive market;
pastis
was everywhere, a commonplace drink. And Marseille itself didn’t enjoy the best of reputations among its neighbors. (Even today, a Marseillais is regarded as a
blagueur
, an exaggerator, a man who will describe a sardine as a whale, not entirely to be believed.)

Further north, however,
pastis
could be sold as something exotic, and distance lent improvement to Marseille’s reputation. It could be invested with the charm of the south—a slightly raffish, relaxed, sunny charm that would appeal to a northerner used to freezing winters and grey skies. So Ricard went north, first to Lyon and then to Paris, and the formula worked. Today it would be unusual to find a bar anywhere in France without its bottle of
le vrai pastis de Marseille
.

The man from Ricard who was telling me this talked about his
patron
with genuine liking. Monsieur Paul, he said, was
un original
, someone who looked for a challenge every day. When I asked if he was involved, like many powerful businessmen, in politics, there was a snort of laughter. “Politicians? He vomits on them all.” I had some sympathy for the sentiment, but in a way I thought it was a pity. The idea of a
pastis
baron as President of France appealed to me, and he would probably have been elected on his advertising slogan:
Un Ricard, sinon rien
.

But Ricard hadn’t invented
pastis
. Like Pernod, he had bottled and marketed something that had been there before. Where had it come from? Who had first mixed the
anis
, the
licorice, the sugar, and the alcohol? Was there a monk (monks, for some reason, have an affinity for alcoholic invention, from champagne to Benedictine) who had made the discovery one blessed day in the monastery kitchens?

Nobody around the table knew exactly how the first glass of
pastis
had come into a thirsty world, but lack of precise knowledge never inhibits a Provençal from expressing an opinion as fact, or a legend as reliable history. The least plausible, and therefore favorite, explanation was the hermit theory—hermits, of course, being almost up to monk standard when it comes to the invention of unusual
apéritifs
.

This particular hermit lived in a hut deep in the forest on the slopes of the Lubéron. He collected herbs, which he stewed in a giant pot, the traditional bubbling cauldron favored by witches, wizards, and alchemists. The juices left in the cauldron after boiling had remarkable properties, not only quenching the hermit’s thirst, but protecting him from an outbreak of plague that was threatening to decimate the population of the Lubéron. The hermit was a generous fellow, and shared his mixture with sufferers from the plague, who immediately recovered. Sensing, perhaps like Paul Ricard long after him, the wider possibilities for his miraculous drink, he left his forest hut and did what any businesslike hermit would have done: He moved to Marseille and opened a bar.

The less picturesque but more likely reason for Provence being the home of
pastis
is that the ingredients were easy to come by. The herbs were cheap, or free. Most peasants made their own wine and distilled their own head-splitting liqueurs, and until fairly recently the right of distillation was a family asset that could be passed down from father to son. That right has been revoked, but there are some surviving
distillateurs
who, until they die, are legally entitled to make what they drink, and
pastis maison
still exists.

Madame Bosc, Michel’s wife, was born near Carpentras and remembers her grandfather making a double-strength
pastis
, 90 percent alcohol, a drink that could make a statue fall down. One day he received a visit from the village
gendarme
. An official visit, on the official
moto
, in full uniform, never a good sign. The
gendarme
was persuaded into one of grandfather’s virulent glasses of
pastis
, then another, then a third. The purpose of the visit was never discussed, but grandfather had to make two trips to the
gendarmerie
in his van: the first was to deliver the unconscious policeman and his bike; the second, to deliver his boots and his
pistolet
, which had been discovered later under the table.

Those were the days. And somewhere in Provence, they probably still are.

It was bad luck that I had no change for the parking meter on one of the few days that the Cavaillon traffic control authorities were out in force. There are two of them, well-padded and slow-moving men who do their best to look sinister in their peaked caps and sunglasses as they move with immense deliberation from car to car, looking for a
contravention
.

I had found a vacant meter that needed feeding, and I went into a nearby cafe for some one-franc pieces. When I returned to the car, a portly figure in blue was squinting suspiciously at the dial on the meter. He looked up and aimed his sunglasses at me, tapping the dial with his pen.

“He has expired.”

I explained my problem, but he was not in the mood to consider any mitigating circumstances.

“Tant pis pour vous,”
he said.
“C’est une contravention.”

I looked around and saw that there were half a dozen cars double-parked. A
maçon’s
truck, brimming with rubble, was abandoned at the corner of a side street, completely blocking the exit. A van on the other side of the road had been left
straddling a pedestrian crossing. My crime seemed relatively minor compared with these flagrant abuses, and I was unwise enough to say so.

I then became officially invisible. There was no reply except a sniff of irritation, and the guardian of the highways walked around me so that he could take down the number of the car. He unsheathed his notebook and consulted his watch.

He was starting to commit my sins to paper—probably adding on a bonus fine for impertinence—when there was a bawl from the café where I had been for change.

“Eh, toi! Georges!”

Georges and I looked around to see a stocky man making his way through the tables and chairs on the pavement, one finger wagging from side to side in the Provencal shorthand that expresses violent disagreement.

For five minutes, Georges and the stocky man shrugged and gesticulated and tapped each other sternly on the chest while my case was discussed. It was true, said the newcomer. Monsieur had just arrived, and he had indeed been into the café to get change. There were witnesses. He flung his arm back toward the café, where three or four faces were turned toward us from the twilight of the bar.

The law is the law, said Georges. It is a clear
contravention
. Besides, I have started to write the form, and so nothing can be done. It is irrevocable.

Mais c’est de la connerie, ça
. Change the form, and give it to that woodenhead who is blocking the street with his truck.

Georges weakened. He looked at the truck and his notebook, gave another sniff, and turned to me so that he could have the last word. “Next time, have change.” He looked at me intently, no doubt committing my criminal features to
memory in case he might need to pull in a suspect one day, and moved off along the pavement toward the
maçon’s
truck.

My rescuer grinned and shook his head. “He has
pois chiches
for brains, that one.” He repeated the insult. Chickpeas, from ear to ear.

I thanked him. Could I buy him a drink? We went into the café together and sat at a dark table in the corner, and I was there for the next two hours.

Robert was his name. He was not quite short, not quite fat, broad across the chest and stomach, thick-necked, dark-faced, dashingly moustached. His smile was a contrast in gold fillings and nicotine-edged teeth, and his brown eyes were lively with amusement. There was an air of faintly unreliable charm about him, the charm of an engaging scamp. I could imagine him in the Cavaillon market selling guaranteed indestructible crockery and almost genuine Levi’s, whatever might have fallen off the back of the
camion
the night before.

As it turned out, he had been a policeman, which was how he had come to know and dislike Georges. Now he was a security consultant, selling alarm systems to owners of second homes in the Lubéron.
Cambrioleurs
were everywhere nowadays, he said, looking for the open window or the unlocked door. It was wonderful for business. Did I have an alarm system? No?
Quelle horreur!
He slipped a card across the table. There was his name and a slogan that read Alarm Technology of the Future, a message that was somewhat at odds with his trademark—a small drawing of a parrot on a perch squawking
“Au voleur!”

I was interested in his work with the police, and why he had left. He settled back in a cloud of
Gitanes
smoke, waved his empty glass at the barman for more
pastis
, and started to talk.

In the beginning, he said, it had been a little slow. Waiting for promotion, just like everyone else, trudging through the routine work, getting bored with the desk jobs, not the kind of excitement he had hoped for. And then came the break, one weekend in Fréjus, where he was taking a few days’ leave.

Every morning he went for breakfast to a café overlooking the sea, and every morning at the same time a man came down to the beach for windsurfing lessons. With the idle half-interest of a holidaymaker, Robert watched as the man got up on his windsurfer, fell off, and got up again.

There was something familiar about the man. Robert had never met him, he was sure, but he had seen him somewhere. There was a prominent mole on his neck and a tattoo on his left arm, the kind of small distinguishing marks that a policeman is trained to notice and remember. It was the windsurfer’s profile that stirred Robert’s memory, the mole on the neck and his slightly hooked nose.

After two days, it came to him. He had seen the profile in black and white with a number underneath it; an identity photograph, a police mug shot. The windsurfer had a record.

Robert went to the local
gendarmerie
, and within half an hour he was looking at the face of a man who had escaped from prison the year before. He was the leader of
le gang de Gardanne
, and known to be dangerous. Physical characteristics included a mole on the neck and a tattoo on the left arm.